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Flip cam videos of Somali crisis help raise more than $1 million for nonprofit

What grabbed our attention about this entry was powerful
storytelling—both from the communicator herself and the people she
reported about.

Mindy Mizell, World Vision media relations director, was sent to the
Horn of Africa as a communicator representing World Vision’s emergency
response team to the drought and famine crisis. She traveled throughout
the region from July to September, only carrying a laptop, a lavaliere
microphone, and a hand-held Flip camera.

For this intrepid
communications idea, we award World Vision with top honors in the Best
Location-Based Campaign category of PR Daily’s Digital PR & Social
Media Awards.

The PR Daily Digital PR and Social Media Awards was presented by Synaptic Digital. Learn more about Synaptic Digital here (pdf).

Even though her communications equipment was limited, Mizell was able to
launch new and innovative social media sites for World Vision’s
response team to tell untold stories about Somali refugees.

“What I didn’t expect to learn was that social media sites let me tell
the ‘raw’ stories in nearly real time straight from the front lines of
the crisis in a way that our staff learned what Somali children really
had to say about the harsh realities of the crisis, without the spin or
bias of marketing,” Mizell says.

Mizell explains how social media provided a voice for the voiceless:

She produced more than 40 Flip cam videos that were uploaded within
hours. Many of the videos were targeted to donors or potential donors
around the world, including churches that eventually provided more than
$1 million in funding due to the social media content that was exposing
the crisis, Mizell says.